0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing
0:00:04news of note in iOS development, Apple, and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm
0:00:09an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia. This is show number 189. Today is
0:00:15Thursday, June 26th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's
0:00:19get started. Okay, so this last week there was a little bit of drama about the role podcast
0:00:25networks play in terms of distribution, discoverability, and so on. And while I don't intend to wade
0:00:30into that discussion, it sparked something that I thought would make an interesting show.
0:00:37And specifically, I wanted to talk about, I guess, the role that linking and recommendations
0:00:42can play in expanding your own audience. I can speak for myself and say that it is a
0:00:47very considerable part of growing your audience, whether that is your app audience, whether
0:00:53that is in terms of things like your followership online and whatever media you prefer to put
0:00:58yourself out there. And it's quite considerable and quite measurable. I mean, I know this
0:01:03show, Developing Perspective, would not be heard by nearly the volume of people that
0:01:08it is if it hadn't been linked to by a variety of people over a long period of time. And
0:01:14so what that made me want to do, though, for this purpose of this show is to return the
0:01:19favor in some ways, or maybe pass it on anyway, and talk about how I stay informed about the
0:01:26goings-on in the Apple community, and more generally, how I stay up to date, what are
0:01:32things that I think are worthwhile to keep up with, the ways in which I challenge myself
0:01:37and I learn new things, and so on.
0:01:40And this isn't exhaustive.
0:01:42My purpose is not to talk about absolutely everything that I do, but to hopefully give
0:01:46a very solid coverage to the various types of things that I try and keep up with. And
0:01:53so this is the result. First thing is probably for her to say, one thing that I used to do
0:01:57a lot that I don't really do as much anymore is you rely on Twitter to keep up with these
0:02:02types of things. I found that even with a lot of muting and things you can try and do
0:02:06to shape your feed, the signal to noise ratio isn't that great. And so I tend to rely on
0:02:14podcasts and blogs a lot more because I find that you just get a lot more, it's a much
0:02:19higher quality output for the time that you have to put into it. And for me, the majority
0:02:24of learning that I do in a given week about what's going on is coming from podcasts. I
0:02:31listen to a large array of podcasts. I love podcasts. They're awesome. And I listen to
0:02:37a variety of things that aren't work-related, certainly. I listen to a variety of other
0:02:42shows, and a few of which I'll mention at the end, that I love and it's my preferred
0:02:47form of entertainment. I'm listening to a podcast every day for several hours a day,
0:02:51probably. But as it relates to work, or specifically as it relates to iOS app development, what
0:03:00podcasts allow me to do is to get, it's as though I have a variety of people who I work
0:03:05with, who I get together with in the lunchroom every day at work, who I then kind of-- I'm
0:03:12overhearing conversations, maybe is one way to think about it. I'm in this office place,
0:03:17this imaginary office place with dozens of really smart people, and I'm sitting there
0:03:21overhearing conversations at lunch to try and get a sense of what people are thinking,
0:03:25how things are going. And it's a different kind of feel than I think you get from a blog
0:03:29post because with a podcast, it has inflection, it has personality. If someone's excited,
0:03:34really comes through in a way that it doesn't, or if they're depressed or they're sad or
0:03:38whatever. It gives it a flavor. And so, as someone who, for the most part, just works
0:03:44by himself, that's an important part of my week, is trying to stay connected on a more
0:03:50human level with how things are going in the industry that is so important to my livelihood.
0:03:56And so here's the shows that I listen to and kind of the groups in which I try and think
0:04:01about them. So the first things I try and keep up with are on programming and design.
0:04:08And so these are shows that I listen to whose purpose is primarily to try and keep me thinking
0:04:13about technology, about what design is involved, was involved in design, and those types of
0:04:17more lower level or perhaps more tactical things. And these are debug, iterate, and
0:04:24mobile couch. Those are three shows that I listen to as soon as they come out. They have
0:04:29a lot of just good information in them and probably worth mentioning. The links to all
0:04:33of these are in the show notes, so don't worry about trying to find them. And those are shows
0:04:38that I find keep me thinking on a more technical level about what's going on in the community.
0:04:44And I've quite enjoyed sort of those. They're much more lower level, and so you sometimes
0:04:49have to pick the right time to listen to them. But they definitely serve a solid purpose
0:04:54in keeping, exposing me to things that I wouldn't necessarily otherwise, especially iterate
0:04:59which is a design-oriented show, I find is very helpful to kind of stretch me a little
0:05:04bit or at least make me aware of things that I just wouldn't be otherwise because design
0:05:08is not my background. Design is not something that I think about quite as much, and so it's
0:05:13important for me to expose myself to that.
0:05:16The next category of things that I try and make sure that I'm exposed to on a weekly
0:05:20basis are more kind of the business-y aspects of doing development, you know, especially
0:05:26So being an independent iOS developer, this is how I make my living.
0:05:29I make my living by selling apps in the store.
0:05:32And so there's a lot of things that go into that that are very complicated and that have
0:05:38a lot of implications.
0:05:39Things like pricing, things like how you handle updates on the actual business side of that.
0:05:48Not the technical side, but should you charge for those?
0:05:51How do you manage that?
0:05:52Doing support.
0:05:53There's a lot of those types of business kind of issues that hearing other people's experiences
0:05:57are incredibly helpful. And so the two shows that I found that most inform and improve
0:06:02my outlook on those types of things are Release Notes and Core Intuition. And there are shows
0:06:09that, you know, I guess I could talk about Release Notes is Charles Perry and Joseph
0:06:15Plinske, and they're talking about just the business of iOS development pretty straightforwardly.
0:06:21And on Core Intuition, it's Daniel Jalkut and Mitten Reese, who talk a bit more generally
0:06:26about things, but it seems like their conversations often end up in relating to the business side
0:06:33of things. And what I love about these two shows in concert is that they come at it from
0:06:38such totally different sides. So on Core Intuition, there's some guys who have been doing this
0:06:43for a long time, and Daniel has especially been coming at this on the Mac side for years.
0:06:49And then on the release notes side, it's much more iOS. It's a bit fresher. It's a bit more
0:06:54kind of new thinking, if you wanted to say. And so the tension and the differences between
0:06:59those two perspectives is really helpful in helping me find my path in between, because
0:07:04I'm not necessarily, you know, everyone ultimately has to find their own kind of path in business
0:07:10and decide what's important to you and what isn't. But I find having that kind of tension
0:07:14really helps. Next, are kind of some more of, I guess you sort of call them the general
0:07:20news shows. So these are things that I just listen to, in some ways just for entertainment,
0:07:25but also just to kind of get the broad, more topical things of what's going on in the community.
0:07:32What are things that I should be aware of? What are things that I should be thinking
0:07:34about? And the two shows that I find best for that are The Prompt and The Accidental
0:07:39Tech Podcast. And so the prompt is a show that's Federico Vittucci, Mike Curley, and
0:07:46Stephen Hackett. I find that they do a very good job, kind of more of a rundown style.
0:07:51There's a lot more. They tend to cover a pretty good breadth of topics. It's certainly thoughtfully
0:07:58considered, but they tend to cover a lot of what happened in the week, which is sometimes
0:08:02just useful to have in a kind of a fairly concise way that I can listen to their show
0:08:06for a little over an hour and get a pretty good sense of what happened, which is especially
0:08:10helpful, say, over the summer when I'm away on travel or those types of things. It's good
0:08:14to kind of just have a quick check in. And then the Accidental Tech podcast, which is
0:08:18Marco, John, Sir Kusa, and Casey Liss is a bit more, I would say a bit more discussion
0:08:25oriented. It's a bit more just kind of them feeding off each other in a discussion environment
0:08:31about generally topical things. But I find that it works well in terms of trying to expand
0:08:36of the thoughts that I have on the implications of the news. So that's why I enjoy that one.
0:08:42And then that's mostly the sort of the podcasts that I listen to. As I said, there's obviously
0:08:48a bunch more, but those are the kind of shows that I find even if you just listened to those
0:08:54seven shows, I think you'd have a pretty good handle on what's going on in the iOS development
0:08:58community, in the Apple community, Apple hardware, just general tech news, you know, what happened
0:09:02at Google I/O this week, these types of things. And that's an important part of being able
0:09:07to make good decisions, is having good information. On the blog side, one thing that I did -- there's
0:09:14a couple of blogs that I really find incredibly helpful that have helped me as a developer,
0:09:19and I want to just kind of quickly run down those now. The first is The Inessential, which
0:09:24is a blog by Brent Simmons, who is talking about -- it varies from time to time what
0:09:29he's talking about. Recently, he's been doing a lot of talk about sync in an app that he has called
0:09:33Vesper. But the way in which he approaches problems is something that I think I, the actual
0:09:40details of what he's talking about often don't aren't particularly necessarily relevant to me.
0:09:45But the way in which he approaches problems is very constructive to help me think about my own
0:09:51thought process. Hopefully that makes sense. And, you know, he has a very clear way of describing
0:09:56how he attaches, attacks a problem, and seeing other people attack a problem, you know, you're
0:10:01not dealing with that same problem yourself, is often helpful in helping you kind of craft
0:10:05the way you should approach particular problems that you're going to encounter.
0:10:10The next blog I'd highly recommend is Jared Sinclair's blog. Jared Sinclair is the maker
0:10:16of many things. I think most recently he'd be most known for Unread, which is an RSS
0:10:20client. And he, what I love about his blog is that he tends to do these design reviews
0:10:29or DD compositions on a roughly, doesn't do them necessarily every week, but he's done
0:10:35quite a few of them where he looks and takes an app and kind of just looks at its design
0:10:40from top to bottom and tries to identify areas that it's strong areas that it's weak. And
0:10:44I really just enjoy being exposed to that kind of thinking. And helps me think more
0:10:50constructively about my own designs, trying to think, "Hmm, would that apply to me? And
0:10:54if it does, how could I fix it?"
0:10:57On the very technical side, the blog that I found I've learned a lot from is by Ole
0:11:02Bergemann, which hopefully I pronounced that even vaguely right. He just blogs about really
0:11:09interesting technical details, and it is just one of those things, as soon as he posts something,
0:11:13I always saw what I'm doing and I read it. Because it's almost, I always learn something
0:11:17from the things that he writes. And I like the way his style in writing, it's very clear
0:11:21and concise. And then lastly, on the blog side, MacStories.net, which is Federico Vittucci's
0:11:29site, is what I found to be probably the best general overview of what's going on in Apple.
0:11:36Currently, it's fairly focused on Apple, which I like in terms of it's not trying to cover
0:11:40a lot of different areas. And it covers it at a good level where it's not this kind of,
0:11:45If you subscribe to the Verge slash Apple's RSS feed or something, it would just be a
0:11:50fire hose of who knows what.
0:11:52But it's a really nice, I find Mac Stories to be a very nicely curated list that works
0:11:56pretty well.
0:11:57And that's pretty much it.
0:11:59Those are the resources that I can commend to you and say, you know, go and check out.
0:12:04If you're not already familiar with any of those podcasts or blogs, I highly recommend
0:12:08that you expose yourself to it.
0:12:10These are the things that I have found that help in, you know, keep me moving forward,
0:12:15keeping me thinking about and challenging the way my perception's on things.
0:12:19Because the most dangerous thing for me is an independent.
0:12:21And if this is, if you're someone who is coming at development and are expecting to do a lot
0:12:25of it on your own, is the most dangerous thing you can do is to get stuck thinking about
0:12:30things only in the way that you naturally think about things.
0:12:33If you do that, you're necessarily not growing.
0:12:36You're necessarily not getting better.
0:12:37Your desk is only not challenging yourself quite as much as you would if you were thinking
0:12:42about things from someone else's perspective. How would they solve this problem? I wonder
0:12:46what Brent would think if he was dealing with this problem. And so thinking about things
0:12:49in those terms, it's a pretty constructive process that I found. It is, you know, I've
0:12:54been doing this now for five and a half, six years now, pretty much working on my own.
0:13:00And these are the tools and the things that I found that I need in order to stay current,
0:13:05order to keep what I'm doing fresh, and so that I don't kind of, you know, get petrified
0:13:09at some point and just get stuck there. So those are the things I'd recommend to you.
0:13:14A couple of random, more just general recommendations that I'll finish off the show with, but on
0:13:20the technical side, that's what I'd strongly recommend. So it's just because I kind of
0:13:25have the floor and I'm talking about things I'd like to expose to other people. A couple
0:13:29of podcasts I've recently started to really enjoy that I thought I'd just commend to you.
0:13:33The first is called Hello Internet, which is by CGP Grey and Brady.
0:13:42And they talk about who knows what.
0:13:44It's just this fascinating show.
0:13:45It's kind of like the classic two guys talking show.
0:13:48They're just going to be talking about who knows all kinds of things.
0:13:53Sometimes it's topical, sometimes it's more general.
0:13:57But generally speaking, they just cover a lot of really interesting topics.
0:14:00And the fascinating thing about this is I always thought that John Siracusa was a singular
0:14:06person and he certainly is.
0:14:08The way in which he can critique and challenge things and the way in which he can do it in
0:14:13an engaging, entertaining way.
0:14:15CGP Grey is, if anything, he is the closest to anyone else I've ever discovered to a Siracusa
0:14:22to have that same type of engaging critique of topics and interesting things.
0:14:27So if you like Type or Critical, you like ATP, there's a good chance you'll really like
0:14:31Hello Internet.
0:14:32So I wanted to recommend it to you.
0:14:34And lastly is Pragmatic, which is a show that just talks about technology in a really interesting,
0:14:40compelling way.
0:14:41And so I recommend those two to you.
0:14:43As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, or complaints, I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.
0:14:47You can email me david@developingperspective.com.
0:14:50Maybe you have some recommendations, some suggestions I would always like to hear, because
0:14:54that's how I expand and get better.
0:14:56All right.
0:14:57Have a great week.
0:14:57Bye!